Head over heels

"Life, I really believe, is about falling in love.
With ideas, with stories, with experiences, mistakes, adventures, poetry, imaginations, old books, new books, movies, music, and, of course, people.
Everything that is worthwhile in this world is worth falling in love with,
and I can’t imagine a better way to live one’s life than
to be always head over heels."
~ Anonymous via Idzie via various others

Worry less

I've read in a couple of sources recently about the two types of worry-thinking. One is productive: you are sifting through solutions and making decisions. The other is, well, not. I do entirely too much of the latter type and always have. Today in my Morning Pages I started developing my personal strategy for changing that. Here 'tis, a work in progress.

Step 1: Notice the stress. (Regular meditation practice makes it easier to notice when you are experiencing stress.)

Step 2: Identify the problem.

Step 3: Admit that the problem cannot be solved. (Or if it can, go do that.)

Step 4: Stop worrying by employing one or more of these techniques:

• Meditate to clear the brain.
• Write Morning Pages or do The Work. (Writing things down seems to send a stronger "knock it off!" message to my brain than mental resolutions.)
• Find a distraction, and don't feel guilty about it because distraction is a perfectly valid approach to dealing with pointless worry.

Step 5: Enjoy all the freed-up brain time!

Anti-school quotes

Post your favorite anti-school quote from songs, movies, plays, or books. I'm hoping to re-create a really fun thread we had on unschooling.com back in the day. The purpose is to show that—despite the widespread support that formal schooling receives—people really do know that something is wrong with it.

I'll start:

"I want to run through the halls of my high school, I want to scream at the top of my lungs. I just found out there's no such thing as the real world, just a lie you've got to rise above." ~ John Mayer, "No Such Thing"